1. Field of Art
The disclosed embodiments relate generally to electronic data management, and more specifically to techniques for identifying an organizational entity (e.g., an organization or its various subgroups) based on a network address (e.g., an IP address).
2. Background of the Invention
Correlating a given network address such as an internet protocol (IP) address with the identity of the real-world organization to which it belongs, or to one or more subgroups of the organization—a technique known as “reverse lookup”—has a number of valuable uses. For example, in a business-to-business (B2B) environment, it is useful for a website operator to know the identity of organizations viewing its website, which in turn can lead to callbacks by sales staff and ultimately to purchases.
Existing methodologies for determining organizational entities (organizations or their subgroups) associated with network addresses are frequently ineffective. For example, registries like the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) and Réseaux IP Européens (RIPE) track IP address-related information, such as the organization owning a given block of IP addresses. However, these registries do not always accurately reflect the true identity of the organization using a given IP address. For example, although a registry typically lists the name of an Internet service provider (ISP) owning a large block of addresses, it would likely not additionally specify the identity of a small business to which the ISP in turn sub-leased a small block of fixed IP addresses within the ISP's larger block unless the small business had specifically requested its inclusion within the registry. Additionally, changes in organizational identity or structure, e.g. those triggered by business mergers and acquisitions, are often not reflected in the registry, leading to misleading results when performing registry lookups.